Left Hand Laurel - Leigh Suskin

Born in Kansas, educated at an Ivy League college in Massachusetts and having worked as a management consultant for 20 years at the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C., Leigh Suskin – owner of Farmers Insurance Agency in Cottonwood Square – is truly a Renaissance woman.

Whether serving root beer floats at Niwot's "National Night Out" celebrating first responders, or studying for her Ph.D. in East/West psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, or raising her two teen-age daughters as a single mom, or working at her "day job" at Amplifire – an e-learning system "built on brain science," Suskin said, "In Niwot, I feel at home."

A member of the Niwot Business Association and correspondent for this newspaper, Suskin lives in Erie on what she calls "a little farm," but she moved her agency to Niwot in 2018 because she enjoys Niwot's community spirit and said she knows and is friendly with many local business owners.

Suskin is being recognized as this month's Left Hand Laurel for her many volunteer efforts in the community, most recently for the kindness she extended to the owner of Abo's Pizza, Jeff Reigel, after a devastating fire on Friday night, Aug. 5, destroyed his business.

It was a typical summer Friday night in Niwot with many members of the community gathered in Cottonwood Square for "Dancing Under the Stars." The music was soothing and everyone was having fun. The employees of Abo's Pizza, which is a few doors down from Suskin's insurance agency in Cottonwood Square, closed up shop at 9 p.m. and the employees went home, but the pizza ovens stayed on, according to a recent investigation by the fire marshall. By morning, there was trouble.

"The manager of Winot Coffee woke up early," said Suskin one recent day over lunch at the Garden Gate Cafe, "saw smoke and called 911. If she [Mary Jo Wysocki] hadn't called, the whole place would have burned down."

Although the owner of Abo's Pizza was not a customer of Farmers Insurance, Suskin's agency, she immediately offered him help navigating the complicated maze of the insurance industry. She offered him free office space, offered to meet with his insurance agents, and got involved in a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the Abo's Pizza staff. Suskin generously shared her insurance expertise with Reigel and explained at length his options to optimize his own insurance coverage.

I'm a community resource," said Suskin "and I want to help people be prepared and be aware before a catastrophe happens, before they need insurance. Even though Jeff wasn't a customer, I was happy to help him in any way I could," she said.

Just then, as we were eating outside, Alex Chlebek, owner of the commercial property at Cottonwood Square and landlord to both Abo's Pizza and Farmers Insurance, stopped by to say hello. Asked for a comment, he pointed toward Suskin and said, "She's a good one to talk to. A shame (the fire) happened."

"Stuff happens though," noted this man of few words as he waved good-bye.

Suskin continued to praise Niwot and the many owners of businesses and members of the community here, who have rallied since the fire happened.

We had a far-ranging conversation over lunch that day, from a discussion of her early days at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she wanted to be an English professor, to her current fulfilling and busy life in Colorado. "I had studied Old English - Shakespeare, Chaucer and did my own translation of Beowulf," she said with a hearty laugh.

She calls herself "an introvert" although in conversation, she is exceedingly friendly and outgoing. Her optimism and positivity keeps her looking ahead – away from the tragedy of the fire into the future.

Her enthusiasm is infectious. She asked, "Want to volunteer with me and my friends here at Lobsterfest on September 3rd?"